The wrong side towards 30...

Thanks to all who posted or sent birthday wishes; I appreciate each and every one of you. It was weird being so far from home on my birthday this year, but it was still a nice day. Sure, we were stuck in the lab identifying worms and snails from our core samples we took at the Shell Island survey, and then we had to go work on our fisheries report, but my classmates remembered my birthday and got me a card and Ruben even brought chocolate and a bottle of champagne for everyone to share at lunchtime. On Thursday night our group got together to write up our report, and to ease the pain of it all we had plenty of snacks and cake and booze. Cider for me, and Chrissy brought a really nice raspberry beer; it was French, but the name of it escapes me. Good stuff, at any rate. We also took a bit of a break to watch some Red Dwarf episodes, so all in all I had a pretty good day. Although I did miss having my usual celebration with cimmerianwillow and dinner with my family.

This week has been so exhausting, and I'm about ready to crash. The survey went well, despite interdepartmental hiccups that prevented us from doing some of the lab work we'd intended (really, academics can be childish anywhere you go), but our results aren't going to suffer so I think we'll be fine. They do this survey every year, Shell Island being divided into four different shores - rocky, sandy, salt marsh, and muddy/soft sediment. I was in the muddy group, and boy, did we get muddy. I was quite glad to have my wellies and waterproofs, and luckily we were blessed with the most gorgeous (if cold) weather for the actual survey day after a week of rain. It was a fun and educational experience, even though I got completely worn out from doing all the coring and dragging sledges through the mud. Serves me right for being in charge of all the equipment.

Am dead on my feet and yawning every two minutes, so I'm off to bed.